I am curious as to others' experience. At present, which leaders do you think provide the best competition as AI run civs?

Well, the one civilization that sticks out is definitely the Malakim.

I have learned to hate Varn Gossam, really. Not only does he usually shoot to the top of the charts - he also seems quick to declare war on you solely on base of religion, even if you're a good civ as well and have acted like his bestest of friends throughout the game. And as if that's not bad enough, he also gives you this condescending speech about "seeing only darkness when he looks at you". All this when he's the one declaring war on a fellow good-aligned civilizations for petty reasons.

So yeah. The Malakim have my vote.

Asides from that, the Ljosalfar and the Luchuirp (surprisingly enough) most always seem to be highly successful. In contrast, it seems like the Khazad are most always a few hundred points behind anyone else.

Asides from that, the Ljosalfar and the Luchuirp (surprisingly enough) most always seem to be highly successful. In contrast, it seems like the Khazad are most always a few hundred points behind anyone else.

The Khazad do not build cities until their gold/city level breaks 100 I believe. This means they do not expand in the early game and run out of space for new cities before they are able to build any.

some of the time the perrson in first place has a serious disadvantage compared to everyone else. like one time it was the sidar in first place and their civ isnt even finished yet! another time it mwas the lauaun on a highlands map, and another time it was cardith, who hasnt even adopted a religion yet

In addition to the Malakim, the Balseraphs and Calabim tend to do very well. Varn definitely seems to get some strange bonus. I've seen him have more points than 2nd and 3rd combined. How does he do it?

I've always found the Hippus to do very well. They REX par excellence (and the mod really rewards rexing) into a big empire, they build up forces early and then they actually declare war and use their fast troops for some serious early-game pillaging, which can really mash up an economy.

Luchuirp seem to lose Barnaxus at least ten times in pretty much every game I've ever played.

In addition to the Malakim, the Balseraphs and Calabim tend to do very well. Varn definitely seems to get some strange bonus. I've seen him have more points than 2nd and 3rd combined. How does he do it?

Financial and Creative are great traits, and I think his starting placement tends to be around floodplains.

I've seen the Ljosalfar dominate as well, particularly on forest heavy and tribal hut heavy maps. If they explore with both scouts and get some good results from the many goodie huts they find, they're bound to do well.

I don't think I've ever seen the Khazad AI winning.

The Elohim do very well and would likely win (via AoL) of the AIs if I didn't beat them to another victory.

I think AI games are pretty useless except for noob orientation. An experienced player about has to set the difficulty to deity to get a challenge from the bots.

That said, I think Tsunke of Hippus is one of the better AI players. In my experience, he consistantly produces a lot of fast-moving units and plays fairly aggressively with them. It was after being harried by him in a MP game that I discovered how fun that civ can be to play. :)

My final advice is to avoid playing with magic-using AI civs since they don't seem to take full advantage of that ability.

Oddly enough, Morgoth tends to do well, that I've seen. Very odd, as I think he has a non-working trait.

Since each of my games has 16 random AIs in them, I tend to see them all leaders to some degree or another.

Bannor - average
Malakim - above average
Elohim - good
Luchuirp - below average
Kuriotates - below average
Ljosalfar - above average; good with Arendel
Khazad - bad
Sidar - average
Lanun - average
Grigori - average
Hippus - average with Rhoanna; above average with Tasunke
Amurites - average
Doviello - bad
Balseraphs - above average
Clan of Embers - average
Svartalfar - average
Calabim - average
Sheaim - average
Illians - below average

I'd have to say that Arendel Phaedra is the toughest competitor, overall, with Ethne the White coming in close behind. My least favourite neighbours are Tasunke (I call him "The Stinker" - yeah, lame, I know...) and either Balseraph leader. I generally haven't had the same issues with Varn as others have hand, though I can certainly see the potential.

The worst two are Khazad and Doviello, even though the former almost always founds Runes of Kilmorph.

Hippus in my games always get to the upper regions of the charts but when it comes to war...pathetic. Their raids into my territory are mostly annoying and I lose lots of workers, it is there were I learn that they need a little break for the war time. The raiders became then my learning dummies for my new units while my experienced ones take the poorly defended cities.

Ethne the White is also one of the better opponents, almost always at the top in the charts if she is in the game.

I don't really look at leaders, I look at the civilizations.

Elohim tend to tech like mad in my games. It's not uncommon for them to have more techs I don't know than the rest combined - and I rarely play with less than 10 AIs. They pretty much always found order (but rarely switch to it as runes or fol will have spread to their lands).
If it's not the Elohim doing well it's the Balseraph. Somehow they manage to found more cities than others. For example in one very crowded game that comes to mind they had four cities while most others, including me, had two. If I find them near me I prepare for war.
Svartalfar do very well early in my games. Really well, have seen them have twice the power of anyone else. But beyond the first 100-200 turns they start to decline, late game being average or worse.

Anyone else depends on circumstances or I just haven't been paying enough attention. Except the Khazad, they are horrible. The only time I've seen them do well was a teamgame where they were allied to the Balseraph.

Khazad are pretty powerful if played by me, but I'm a NI not an AI. Nevertheless, I have seen the Khazad being very powerful in the middle and late game played by an AI as well. Thy are just a bit slow at the beginning, but when the money starts pouring in, they are great.

Elohim usually does well in my games, and the Ljosalfar leaders, Cardith Lorda usually get a strong economy it seems. And his cultural borders help him put pressure on his neighbors (the more the smaller the map is). Malakim usually seem to do well too, and Balseraph as well.

My list is in bold, and is quite different. Notably, evil civs are always at disadvantage vs good civs, unless I play evil and help them; or especially if I play good and oppose them.


Bannor - average bad
Malakim - above average good
Elohim - good good
Luchuirp - below average average
Kuriotates - below average very bad
Ljosalfar - above average; good with Arendel above avg / good
Khazad - bad below average
Sidar - average N/A
Lanun - average below average
Grigori - average below average
Hippus - average with Rhoanna; above average with Tasunke average
Amurites - average average
Doviello - bad below average
Balseraphs - above average average
Clan of Embers - average average / above avg
Svartalfar - average good
Calabim - average below average
Sheaim - average below average
Illians - below average N/A

Cardith Lorda usually get a strong economy it seems. And his cultural borders help him put pressure on his neighbors (the more the smaller the map is).


I find that the cultural pressure from Cardith is usually the cause of his death. I can't remember one game in which Cardith Lorda survived till the end. His high cultural pressure provokes wars, and once he is at war he's toasted. He has no means of defense, his UU kicks in when he's already dead, his outposts are undefendable by the AI because it doesn't know the meaning of reinforcements. He might have a strong economy, but if someone declares on him, and this does normally happen, that strong economy won't help him much to survive... Also I don't believe he has such a strong economy. I never saw him owning a big "standing army", as opposed for example to the elves. The elves really have a healthy economy, and you can see it from the sheer number of units they can field. I recognize he might be better in smaller maps, because the total number of cities is inferior and the proportion tends toward his super-cities. However in a large map, or Highlands standard map, it's just plainly better to have 7-8 good cities than 3-4 super cities. Not to mention that the AI is incapable of exploiting the sprawling trait at its best as a human player can do.

My list is in bold, and is quite different. Notably, evil civs are always at disadvantage vs good civs, unless I play evil and help them; or especially if I play good and oppose them.

I agree with your general statement that the AI Evil civs seem to do poorly, especially against Good civs. When I have played one (Sheaim in the past, and Perpentach my current game), they seem to fare much better. With Good or Neutral AI civs, though, they seem to fare OK most of the time.

Again, I have found in my last few games no Hyborem because the AI Evil civs were so poor.

In my games Balseraphs, Malakin and Hippus usually are at the top. It takes half of the game for me to catch up and take them.

The Balseraphs tend to drive me nuts with their expanion, especially if I start too close to them. Regardless of which leader they have, they just seem to spread out much faster than anyone else.

However in a large map, or Highlands standard map, it's just plainly better to have 7-8 good cities than 3-4 super cities.

Yeah well, I almost never play Large maps, and when I do, I usually play with high shores and 16 civs, so 4 cities is pretty decent amount, especially with his culture.

On a small map, he could basically win a domination victory, peacefully. :P

If people are having trouble with Evil civs falling behind, I've found that turning off tech trading helps level things some. I think good civs are more likely to trade with each other than evil civs are. It does take away some strategy, though, as you can't bribe someone to war with a tech and you also can't demand it while they are suing for peace.

Actually, you're right. Don't good civs have a "you're good" bonus, while evil civs (by virtue of being rather selfish) don't get a similar one? That would mean good civs are more likely to trade techs.

no, evil civs get the same bonus with each other. And AV civs get a bonus with you if you help rising the counter.

Evil civs may get a small bonus with each other, but they rarely open their borders, and their Religion bonus is often very low for sharing religion. And almost never do they switch to AV. It's not only the "+2 You are Evil" etc that makes them trade, it's their personality.

The evil civs also seem to like going to war when they are not ready for it. I've had many Evil civs declare war on me, then doing nothing for a long while, then they send a stack of 4 Hunters that doesn't dare to attack any cities, and cant even pillage.

I'll focus only on the best and the worst AIs:
Best:
Malakim, Elohim, Balseraph, Calabim, Ljosalfar: they do well in nearly all games, even Balseraph with Perpentach is surprisingly good as AI. In my experiences also the Grigori do well. Philosophical is always strong and they have good relationships with everyone, because they get no religious negative attitudes.

worst:
Doviello, especially with Charadon: He overexpands, is over-aggressive and suffers from the -10% science penalty. Normally his units don't reach levels above the beastman. At this stage he is often enemy number one of a good (power) good(alignment) civ, and that's it.
Kuriotates: The AI is not capable to select ideal city locations. They settle like a normal AI and later they found all those useless settlements.
Sheaim: Not particulary weak, but allways in the lower ranks. They don't go like they should. The game mechanics for them seem to complicated for the AI. They are not able to use their summon abilities or their planar gates. Further they are the ones going Ashen Veil and "destroying the world". It makes them the enemy of erveryone and they get crushed.

The Kazhad were regarded as weak in many posts here. I don't think so. They build few but well developed cities. They are production-power number 1 and get many wonders and have strong military in numbers and quality. I have often seen the Khazad go to war and eliminate other civs completely. They eliminated their dwarven brothers the Luirchup in my last game with no problems. runes get wide spread, so their diplomatic status isn't bad either. I regard them as quite strong, even with few cities and land.

Any civ with a highly specialized approach suffers.

I would say that the Luchuirp are the worst, hands down. I went to war with the Luchuirp in my last game around year 200/Huge/Pangea/Emperor and they had many slingers and crossbowmen but a bare handful of wood golems and no other golems. They also use Barnaxus too aggressively and get him killed. Finally, the AI's lack of understanding of magic is particularly devastating to the Luchuirp due to the slow natural heal rate of golems. Between these three errors they are a sad shadow of themselves when played by the AI.

The Sheaim, similarly, rarely build Planar Gates and don't push for summoners. They also don't crank the AC (which doesn't matter given their lack of Planar Gates, but would if they did).

While others may be weak, I've never seen another AI civ miss the mark quite so totally as these two.

Sheaim: Not particulary weak, but allways in the lower ranks. They don't go like they should. The game mechanics for them seem to complicated for the AI. They are not able to use their summon abilities or their planar gates. Further they are the ones going Ashen Veil and "destroying the world". It makes them the enemy of erveryone and they get crushed.

The Sheaim, similarly, rarely build Planar Gates and don't push for summoners. They also don't crank the AC (which doesn't matter given their lack of Planar Gates, but would if they did).

I too have not seen the Sheaim make full use of their Planar Gates, which leads me to a question. Just how does the AIWeight work?
In looking thru the buildings the AIWeight is set at 0-40 for every building except for 6 buildings.
The Sculptors Studio and Stables get an 80.
The Forge and Grand Managerie get a 100.
and the Mercurian gate and the Planar Gate get a 300.
Is there a more effective way to get a specific civilization to produce a building or research a tech. Is there a number on the AIweight that hits the sweet spot in getting it to perform more like a human player would?

If AIWeight truly does affect how likely the computer will try to build a particular building in its cities, can it be looked at as each civ individually or just civs in the game in general. If it is just in general, some of the unique buildings can still be looked at.
For instance, The Monument and the Adventurer's Guild have an AIWeight of 0, a human player will definately want the GPP/Adventurers points as much as possible, shouldn't the computer too.
The Dwarven Smithy is also AIWeight of 0, by the time they get smelting they should have either copper or iron and get that +20% prod. bonus
There are more, but that's kinda my point. If you can set individual AIWeights for Techs and Buildings for each Civ it should help the computer perform better, and if not then we can at least look at the individual techs/buildings and see if we can help the computer out more.

Best: Balseraph, Lanun, Malakim, Sidar.

Ljosalfar are risky: they make an early rush for the FoL and often it suppresses their expansion. But if their religion then spread outside they may have advantage of the allies and tech trade. Dwarven civs make the same early religion rush which is usually catastrophic for them (I think they do it before agriculture).

Kuriotates start good but then somewhy stop tech advance even if not attacked. I suspect that their pacifism is not good on after-early steps.

On a small map, he could basically win a domination victory, peacefully. :P

Hardly because like I said, this cultural pressure leads him to wars, and I have never seen him winning any, plus if his enemy(s) is at least decent, he gets totally wiped off.

On a duel map he would probably win domination before he ever got as far as fighting a real war.

Just thinking, the colonies part of BtS could be great for him. Since he can only have a limited number of cities, he can turn others into colonies, and give his settlements to vassals so that they can build the armies to protect him.

ljosalfar, einion of the elohim, cassiel tend to always do good
capria is another one
builds a giant army and somehow researches ridiculously fast no matter what the GNP graph says
doesn't go into stupid wars either

Firstly I want to clarify something which is sometimes important. Highest score /= winning the game. That is to say, some civ might be frequently in the lead score-wise but another civ could potentially win the game (e.g. via altar victory). Therefore if the OP question means who is most likely to win the game against you, don't use high score as a surrogate end-point.

Fighting humans is difficult because we all play differently so the AI reacts a bit differently in each game I suspect. My idea is to get some AI under the same map conditions (e.g. great plains, standard size, aggressive AI, etc) and let them just duke it out without you. Then write down who won each game and do Chi square analysis at the end (you need to decide how many games to run before you start running them otherwise you introduce bias and of course it needs to be enough that you get adequate numbers in each 'square' of the table and this depends on how many civs you play with). Alternatively if you want to look at ending high scores I was thinking about t-test analysis using a similar game plan system.

i have been playing on a arcaelgeo map lately.
i have actualy saw a few civs expnding off their island, but they built their cities on the other side of the planet for some reason. i have seen this strange city placement three times. likily i saved them the matenece costs by sinking their \cities with my hn tsunami mage. i have seen the clan send a unescorted galleon out to try to colinise another island, but it neglected to notice i had a kraken three spaces from the city. i did see the lurchip try to invade someone, their invasion fce consisted of combat 1 barnaxus and nothing else. but the ljosfadar did conquer the dovello island. and the calabim stayed on their tiny two city island and stayedd at 300 pooints while others were at 2000

The Kuriotates have always done really good in my games... try as i might, I always end up losing a massive portion of my army in the siege and capture of their cities, no matter how strong my units are, how many spells are cast on the defenders, or how many sneaky tactics i use to shut them down. Cutting off their food supply is extremely hard too thanks to the *&%@ing sprawling trait.

Fighting humans is difficult because we all play differently so the AI reacts a bit differently in each game I suspect. My idea is to get some AI under the same map conditions (e.g. great plains, standard size, aggressive AI, etc) and let them just duke it out without you. Then write down who won each game and do Chi square analysis at the end (you need to decide how many games to run before you start running them otherwise you introduce bias and of course it needs to be enough that you get adequate numbers in each 'square' of the table and this depends on how many civs you play with). Alternatively if you want to look at ending high scores I was thinking about t-test analysis using a similar game plan system.

That is a great idea! I created a random map and put my city in an impenetrable island surrounded by peaks and set science to zero. However, even after unchecking the "wait at end of turn" option, I still have to press enter to advance turns. Is there a way to allow the game to just "play itself" without user interaction?

Here's (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=208513) the thread in which I asked how to make the game AI only. The problem is that when it destroys your civ at the start then there is a big gap that one civ can expand into. That's what ruined the idea for me. However if you could have your civ start on e.g. a 1 square island and then destroy them in the first turn with this method it shouldn't affect the AI game.

The idea behind this method is that it is scientific, not anecdotal. The main problem is that if you dont include every leader/civ in the analysis then you have the problem that a game with many evil civs behaves differently to a game with many good civs. So therefore I think you would only be able to test e.g. half a dozen leaders together, the same leaders only, and make a conclusion only for those leaders when they are played together (to be scientific about it).

One thing is that each game would have to have a winner - therefore there should be no time limit for ending the game (unless the highest score at year e.g. 500 is taken to be a winner...).

http://hg.wustl.edu/info/linkage/web_chi/web_chi_form6.html seems to be like the Chi square calculator I used ages ago from georgetown online.

The 2 horizontal boxes could be win (via any condition) and the many vertical boxes could be the leaders. Then think how many games will be needed for adequate numbers (this is not particularly scientific - there are ways to calculate the correct amount but I don't think I know how to for this so just doing HEAPS of games (determine this number before starting running the games!) would make it OK - you can't do too many but you can do too few!). Then just enter the data in the boxes after running all the games (ie number of games won/not won) to each leader and press calculate significance. Hopefully there will not be a significant result!

You could mod in AI Auto Play by jdogg. It's a feature which lets, with a command, the AI take over your civ for X amount of turns.

Cardith lorda, without a doubt, followed by elves, and the Balseraphs do fairly well early to mid-game. Grigori does well, too.

I've noticed evil civs have a tough time, because they're almost always annoyed with non-evils. They don't remain at the top score-wise for long, in just about every game. Just one of those many things I undid with tweaking.
Khazad does awfully, because of technological predisposition.

You could mod in AI Auto Play by jdogg. It's a feature which lets, with a command, the AI take over your civ for X amount of turns.

Do you have the link handy?

Cardith lorda, without a doubt, followed by elves, and the Balseraphs do fairly well early to mid-game. Grigori does well, too.

I've noticed evil civs have a tough time, because they're almost always annoyed with non-evils. They don't remain at the top score-wise for long, in just about every game. Just one of those many things I undid with tweaking.
Khazad does awfully, because of technological predisposition.

I share your experiences with Khazad and Kuriotates til Midgame. But then changes happen:
Kuriotates has large land areas, causes cultural pressure everywhere but has no army to back up all those colonies.
Khazad in contrast found few cities, but only decent ones. They raze nearly every barbarian city they conquer. But this works good with his dwarven vault productivity. The Khazad always have large und powerful military, are technologically among the best and have a solifd economy. Thats why i see them as a strong civ. On the other hand the Khazad will never really win a game, because they have to remain small to keep their strengths.

In terms of victory conditions there are only two, that the AI is able to acchieve: Altar and Domination
Good AI civs for Altar victory: Bannor, Elohim, sometimes Ljosalfar, maybe Kardith is capable too (I think this condition is not available for evil civs?)
Good AI civs for domination: I have yet only seen Calabim, Khazad, Bannor and Malakim as efficient warmongers and conquerors. That means crushing one or two civs and conquering a whole continent or the biggest part. Even these successful conquest have been far from domination. But thats similar in vanilla too.

I'm in the middle of a game in Prince. I started as the Hippus but finally managed to play as the Mercurians. I razed Keely and Sheelba, now there's me and Rhoanna, Cardith, Amelanchier and Faeryl/Hyborem. Faeryl boosted research with the Veil, and built almost every wonder available. I think I set the map to Continents - can't remember now - but the thing is, there are a few islands and Cardith got three-men-defended settlements around. There's even one lonely settlement with ZERO units inside.

Amelanchier spawned in a northern continent and just got one city out of there. Faeryl also settled in her island and got one island far away from there.

In my continent there was me (Hippus), Keelyn and Sheelba. Then Hyborem spawned in the middle of the Clan and I built the Mercurian gate. As I was razing Keelyn, Hyborem founded 2 one-land-tile city and another city near Amelanchier.

I dunno if this is regular, but I must say it's quite a funny game and Faeryl doing good is news to me. BTW, I'm not quite a warmonger, when I have the opportunity and my cities have a nice infra-structure (damn Simcity-player) I go to war - incredibly the AI is being VERY peaceful, I was the one that started all the wars yet. Cardith was at war with Faeryl once, and Amelanchier fought for a while. But as I said, this was the most... peaceful and interesting game since a long time :P

Aaaaaand FYI, I haven't finished ANY game yet in FfH2. Usually I quit by turn 200 or something - the Trophy Hall does miracles.

Faeryl and Morgoth does pretty good in most my games. Especially Faeryl. Which is weird since she has 2 useless traits for the AI.

it seems that by finishing a civ makes it do worse with the ai

I share your experiences with Khazad and Kuriotates til Midgame. But then changes happen:
Kuriotates has large land areas, causes cultural pressure everywhere but has no army to back up all those colonies.
Khazad in contrast found few cities, but only decent ones. They raze nearly every barbarian city they conquer. But this works good with his dwarven vault productivity. The Khazad always have large und powerful military, are technologically among the best and have a solifd economy. Thats why i see them as a strong civ. On the other hand the Khazad will never really win a game, because they have to remain small to keep their strengths.

In terms of victory conditions there are only two, that the AI is able to acchieve: Altar and Domination
Good AI civs for Altar victory: Bannor, Elohim, sometimes Ljosalfar, maybe Kardith is capable too (I think this condition is not available for evil civs?)
Good AI civs for domination: I have yet only seen Calabim, Khazad, Bannor and Malakim as efficient warmongers and conquerors. That means crushing one or two civs and conquering a whole continent or the biggest part. Even these successful conquest have been far from domination. But thats similar in vanilla too.


I haven't bothered to give the AIs a chance to win @ noble difficulty, even on vanilla untweaked FFH.

Doviello came close to stomping me out in one game because I focused on founding religions (meaning more than one!) and having the shrines pop into my capitol. Meaning, I was playing with only one city for about 150ish turns. Then doviello tries to zerg rush me with about 15-20 beastmen. It wasn't pretty...

Another time I got goodie hut techs all the way up to smelting and metal casting just by pure luck, with copper nearby, when Doviello declares war again, all of the sudden... reload autosave from a few turns back, they still declare war, but I have a few pikemen ready this time and place them in harm's way, on hilly terrain. After several more reloads, I figured out how to stop the first bum rush. Battle of Issus, I guess. Try to heal up my 3 pikemen, and an even bigger second wave comes in and wipes them out.... repeatedly, as I try every maneuver I can to stop them.

Those had to be the shortest two games I played seriously... fuunnnnn times all in all!:crazyeye: :crazyeye: :crazyeye:

I think some of the differences in people's opinions may depend on how they play the game. E.g. in a game with a high civ:land ratio then the Khazad may do much better since everyone has a small empire but in a game with a low civ:land ratio then the Ljosalfar might do very well because they can expand uninterrupted and get a large empire which makes them powerful.

I think the Khazad AI is quite good - they rarely make bad decisions, Kandros in particular - but the gold/settlement tie-in hampers them score-wise. Like others have said, they have no trouble with anything they set out to do as far as war, even when they've only half the towns the rest of us have. In one game the Calabim were all but wiped off the map by a skeleton dump from Sailor's Dirge and Orthus, and the Khazad expanded into the void left behind over the next few turns and wound up ahead of everyone but Keelyn.

Warmonger Civs:
The Calabim and Jonas (not Sheelba) and Capria have been the most notable military leaders in my games so far, but Tasunke rarely shows up and I've been playing on noble and prince while I try to fill out the Trophy Hall and figure out some beeline routes and so forth.

Good Civs:
The Luichurip are quickly becoming my least favorite AI civ; they show up much too often in my games, are no fun (or threat) as played by the AI, and have weird diplomatic messages. The Elohim are, as others have noted, pretty good.

Evil Civs:
Under Tebryn the Sheaim tend to do all right on science, but are otherwise sort of mediocre; of the other evil civs only Auric seems to have a particularly strong AI, which I'd suspect of borrowing heavily from Ragnar's (in Warlords) if I knew anything about how one actually sets those up. Faeryl and Keelyn don't do anything embarassing, either.

Side question: Is Auric set to be an atheist or slated for a themed religion in the future? He never seems to convert to anything.

Auric is the only other Agnostic leader. The only god he'll worship isn't currently alive.

He doesn't have the Agnostic trait (anymore?) but he still doesn't adopt a religion.

I've checked the XML after having a discussion about it cause the Civilopedia doesn't mark him as Agnostic.

he definitely used to have it, i checked an older version and found his traits as this in the xml:
<Traits>
<Trait>
<TraitType>TRAIT_AGNOSTIC</TraitType>
<bTrait>1</bTrait>
</Trait>
<Trait>
<TraitType>TRAIT_MAGIC_RESISTANT</TraitType>
<bTrait>1</bTrait>
</Trait>
<Trait>
<TraitType>TRAIT_PHILOSOPHICAL</TraitType>
<bTrait>1</bTrait>
</Trait>
</Traits>

In the Current version he doesn't have it, but he sure did in .21 and earlier. The personalty civLeaderheadInfos file contains AI weights for each religion, so with his very negative weights towards all of them he wouldn't adopt one anyway. The current one hurts the AI (since he won't convert but doesn't get the lower chance of religion spread), but is good for human players.

I wonder if the Traits absence is related to the possibility of adding a Mulcarn religion (probably in Ice), which is the only one he would adopt. Of course, it was probably just an oversight.

If the trait is only for Cassiel now, it should really be named Deist, since the angel is definately not undecided on the existence of and proper role of gods (both his peers and The One). Auric's trait, of course, should really be called Autotheistic.

In the Current version he doesn't have it, but he sure did in .21 and earlier. The personalty civLeaderheadInfos file contains AI weights for each religion, so with his very negative weights towards all of them he wouldn't adopt one anyway. The current one hurts the AI (since he won't convert but doesn't get the lower chance of religion spread), but is good for human players.

I wonder if the Traits absence is related to the possibility of adding a Mulcarn religion (probably in Ice), which is the only one he would adopt. Of course, it was probably just an oversight.

If the trait is only for Cassiel now, it should really be named Deist, since the angel is definately not undecided on the existence of and proper role of gods (both his peers and The One). Auric's trait, of course, should really be called Autotheistic.

Apothetic? ;)

Everything about Auric is pretty entertaining from my standpoint; I'm sorry he's not playable (though I understand Sureshot's mod-mod enables him and will no doubt try it eventually). If I had the faintest clue where to start in terms of modding I'd see if I could give him a civic, religion, or a latitude-dependent wonder of some kind (which should be possible given how the Space Elevator works, I'd guess).

I find Tansuke does well in the begining. He always attacks other civs, often eliminating them. Once everyone startes getting magic and religion, they start to lag behind though. He sucks on Archipelago too. I find the Malakim are powerful to. In my fractal games, They always take their entire continent, and have a strong military. Oddly enough, the Sidar always do well. In my game, they conquered Luchurip and the hippus, and took the entire continent.